Undergraduate Brothers
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Creed Undergraduate Calendar True Brother Initiative


TRUE BROTHER INITIATIVE
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Lambda Chi Alpha has recently undertaken an innovative and revolutionary approach to our sense of mission and related programming for our undergraduate brothers. Unlike most college fraternities which emphasize the social aspects of undergraduate life, Lambda Chi Alpha has moved to an educational focus as a co-curricular institution partnering with our university hosts to promote the development of our brothers in values clarification, leadership skills, and the maturation of integrity and character.
The True Brother Initiative integrates all of the fraternity's programs to pursue this vision for each brother's individual development and for the operational excellence and stability of each of our chapters. Each component of the initiative utilizes a comprehensive learning model which emphasizes developmentally focused experience followed by self-reflection, guided journaling for meaning making and integration, and sharing of the learning experience with mentors and other brothers. This model of "experience-reflect-make meaning-share" enhances the impact and durability of each program's educational objective. shield

The initiative is organized into three main components:

  • The Outer Circle begins with the recruitment process and extends to initiation.
  • The Inner Circle focuses on brother involvement, education, and development from initiation to graduation.
  • The Mastery Circle provides continued opportunities for alumni to participate in a lifelong experience of brotherhood and service.

In The Outer Circle, the Cole Recruitment model and the educational curriculum of the Call to Brotherhood focus on the fraternity's Seven Core Values: Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Service and Stewardship, Honor, Integrity and Personal Courage. The goal is to recruit young men who are not only distinguished by their scholarship, leadership, involvement, and community service, but who also share high ideals and ambitions and a commitment to personal integrity. Our initiative then involves these men in experiences to help them clarify and apply their values with authenticity and courage. All fraternities ascribe to high ideals on paper; Lambda Chi Alpha provides clear expectations, standards, examples, mentoring, and an educational map to turn lofty words into real life actions.

In the Inner Circle, brothers learn to apply our values and ideals with increased awareness, understanding and relational sensitivity, and competence as they examine and engage the Four Roles of Brotherhood: Faithful Steward, Servant Leader, Leader of Character and Lifetime Brother. These learning pathways are also designed to help each man to develop core maturational competency in empathy, self awareness, self esteem, altruism and capacity for intimacy. These developmental competencies were selected due to a vast literature which documents their association with numerous measures of health and life success including reduced alcohol abuse, increased resistance to stress and related illness, increased life expectancy, improved relationships, reduced divorce rates, increased scores on measures of leadership, enhanced professional success and increased lifetime earnings.  In a very significant way, The True Brother Initiative is focused on building better men who live healthier, richer lives.

While this goal is admirable, Lambda Chi Alpha now has ongoing research data to demonstrate success in achieving it. Ours is the FIRST and ONLY fraternity that has research data to document the value of its developmental and educational programs. We continue to follow thousands of our brothers across North America with assessment points at association, initiation, graduation and beyond.  Significant findings to date include:

  • Increased performance on numerous measures of excellence in chapter operations, such as campus involvement, grade point average, and retention.
  • Scores higher than national norms for college students and for men in other college fraternities on measures of self awareness, positive self esteem, and capacity of intimacy.
  • Scores twice as high as norms for college students on measures of empathy.

These results are remarkable and groundbreaking and have created great excitement in the Greek world and among higher education administrators and professionals across the country. This empirical validation for the True Brother Initiative is further evidence of its value for Alpha-Alpha and for our brothers at Butler University.

The True Brother initiative also includes several additional education modules which brothers may participate in during either the Outer Circle or the Inner Circle. These include: True Leader, which focuses on the development of leadership skills; True ID, which focuses on interpersonal development and competence and sensitivity in dealing with diversity and multicultural concerns; and True Health, which focuses on fitness, nutrition, and health concerns and an elaborate harm-reduction program, which includes risk management issues and the dynamics of bystander behavior. Together, these modules create a comprehensive opportunity to expand awareness and competence in sensitive issues facing college students today.

Finally, the True Brother Initiative provides an elaborate curriculum for advisors through the True Advisers modules and Neville Advisors' College, which prepares our alumni to work effectively in a variety of roles with our undergraduate brothers.

"Those of us who know the true meaning of brotherhood must practice it."
-- Harry S. Truman, former U.S. President, Lambda Chi Alpha, University of Missouri